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By Merrill Moore. (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1952.)
Merrill Moore, noted Boston psychiatrist, who has already published four volumes of sonnets, now offers a new collection on themes derived from his professional experiences. They are true to sonnet form, that most difficult type of poetic structure, and cover a wide variety of characterizations, problems, dilemmas and perplexities familiar to psychiatrists. These range from the defence of unreasonable reserve to the satisfaction of sexual satiation; from self-sacrifice through inhibition to the release of unresolved difficulties by unremitting devotion to work.
It is amazing how clearly and dramatically Dr. Moore's deft touch brings into focus these variegated portraits in fourteen lines. Perhaps even more noteworthy is the profusion of Dr. Moore's contributions. A hint concerning this may be detected in the introduction where he says that after thinking out the first three or four lines the sonnet 'would pick up some sort of momentum of its own and go on writing itself'. This might be interpreted that much of Dr. Moore's feeling is transposed into words directly from the foreconscious or even the unconscious—which may account for its spontaneity, vitality and force.
If this is so, we may expect many more sonnets from Dr. Moore's pen to epitomize situations which psychiatrists know about but which he alone has found possible to record so vividly. The psychiatrist and layman will take pleasure in meditating and sometimes chuckling over these brilliant characterizations.